Varied Types eBook

Having made clear my position so far, I discover with
a certain amount of interest that I have not yet got
to the subject of these remarks. The German Emperor
is a poet, and although, as far as I know, every line
he ever wrote may be nonsense, he is a poet in this
real sense, that he has realised the meaning of every
function he has performed. Why should we jeer
at him because he has a great many uniforms, for instance?
The very essence of the really imaginative man is
that he realises the various types or capacities in
which he can appear. Every one of us, or almost
every one of us, does in reality fulfil almost as many
offices as Pooh-Bah. Almost every one of us is
a ratepayer, an immortal soul, an Englishman, a baptised
person, a mammal, a minor poet, a juryman, a married
man, a bicyclist, a Christian, a purchaser of newspapers,
and a critic of Mr. Alfred Austin. We ought to
have uniforms for all these things. How beautiful
it would be if we appeared to-morrow in the uniform
of a ratepayer, in brown and green, with buttons made
in the shape of coins, and a blue income-tax paper
tastefully arranged as a favour; or, again, if we
appeared dressed as immortal souls, in a blue uniform
with stars. It would be very exciting to dress
up as Englishmen, or to go to a fancy dress ball as
Christians.

Some of the costumes I have suggested might appear
a little more difficult to carry out. The dress
of a person who purchases newspapers (though it mostly
consists of coloured evening editions arranged in a
stiff skirt, like that of a saltatrice, round the waist
of the wearer) has many mysterious points. The
attire of a person prepared to criticise the Poet
Laureate is something so awful and striking that I
dare not even begin to describe it; the one fact which
I am willing to reveal, and to state seriously and
responsibly, is that it buttons up behind.

But most assuredly we ought not to abuse the Kaiser
because he is fond of putting on all his uniforms;
he does so because he has a large number of established
and involuntary incarnations. He tries to do his
duty in that state of life to which it shall please
God to call him; and it so happens that he has been
called to as many different estates as there are regiments
in the German Army. He is a huntsman and proud
of being a huntsman, an engineer and proud of being
an engineer, an infantry soldier and proud of being
so, a light horseman and proud of being so. There
is nothing wrong in all this; the only wrong thing
is that it should be confined to the merely destructive
arts of war. The sight of the German Kaiser in
the most magnificent of the uniforms in which he had
led armies to victory is not in itself so splendid
or delightful as that of many other sights which might
come before us without a whisper of the alarms of
war. It is not so splendid or delightful as the
sight of an ordinary householder showing himself in
that magnificent uniform of purple and silver which